Don’t get hopes up, 15s Windows 7 boot time is just a goal

Michael Fortin, who leads the Fundamentals feature team that is Windows 7's …

It became clear in May that Microsoft would be focusing on performance and compatibility in Windows 7, and the performance initiative was again emphasized last month. This should be pretty easy to achieve since the new operating system is to have the same hardware requirements as Vista does, and hardware is only going to keep getting better and better from Vista's launch to its successor's release. Improving performance isn't as simple as just flipping a switch though.

Last week, Michael Fortin, who leads the Fundamentals feature team that is Windows 7's Core Operating System group, made a post on the E7 blog that detailed what Microsoft was doing to improve "boot performance." He wrote that something that many people got a little excited about:

For Windows 7, a top goal is to significantly increase the number of systems that experience very good boot times. In the lab, a very good system is one that boots in under 15 seconds. For a PC to boot fast a number of tasks need to be performed efficiently and with a high degree of parallelism.

15 seconds is quite a remarkable goal to be pushing for, but that's all it is: a goal. Maybe some of the computers that will become available at the same time Windows 7 comes out will be able to boot in 15 seconds. Maybe not. Microsoft made a boot performance claim when it was developing Vista, and we all know the company did not pull it off. Over a quarter of Vista systems currently take between 30 and 40 seconds for boot time, where boot time means a machine is ready and responsive for the user.

Fortin also mentions how Microsoft has worked with its OEM partners and has noticed that major decreases in boot time can be achieved by simply reinstalling Vista SP1 on a PC that was just purchased. He didn't say what exactly Microsoft plans to do about that. He did, however, say that the team is working on cutting down the number of services that Windows 7 will have starting automatically:

As an example Windows 7 effort, we are working very hard on system services. We aim to dramatically reduce them in number, as well as reduce their CPU, disk and memory demands. Our perspective on this is simple; if a service is not absolutely required, it shouldn’t be starting and a trigger should exist to handle rare conditions so that the service operates only then.

So Microsoft is definitely trying to address the problems associated with long boot times, but the company doesn't want to remove any features that users are already used to and have come to expect from a Windows install. In other words, get excited, but don't get your hopes up.